In Clive's Command eBook

Preface

I have not attempted in this story to give a full
account of the career of Lord Clive. That has
been done by my old friend, Mr. Henty, in “With
Clive in India.” It has always seemed to
me that a single book provides too narrow a canvas
for the display of a life so full and varied as Clive’s,
and that a work of fiction is bound to suffer, structurally
and in detail, from the compression of the events
of a lifetime within so restricted a space. I
have therefore chosen two outstanding events in the
history of India—­the capture of Gheria and
the battle of Plassey—­and have made them
the pivot of a personal story of adventure. The
whole action of the present work is comprised in the
years from 1754 to 1757.

But while this book is thus rather a romance with
a background of history than an historical biography
with an admixture of fiction, the reader may be assured
that the information its pages contain is accurate.
I have drawn freely upon the standard authorities:
Orme, Ives, Grose, the lives of Clive by Malcolm
and Colonel Malleson, and many other works; in particular
the monumental volumes by Mr. S.C. Hill recently
published, “Bengal in 1756-7,” which give
a very full, careful and clear account of that notable
year, with a mass of most useful and interesting documents.
The maps of Bengal, Fort William and Plassey are taken
from Mr. Hill’s work by kind permission of the
Secretary of State for India. I have to thank
also Mr. T. P. Marshall, of Newport, for some valuable
notes on the history and topography of Market Drayton.

For several years I myself lived within a stone’s
throw of the scene of the tragedy of the Black Hole;
and though at that time I had no intention of writing
a story for boys, I hope that the impressions of Indian
life, character and scenery then gained have helped
to create an atmosphere and to give reality to my
picture. History is more than a mere record of
events; and I shall be satisfied if the reader gets
from these pages an idea, however imperfect, of the
conditions of life under which all empire builders
labored in India a hundred and fifty years ago.

Herbert Strang

Chapter 1: In which the Court Leet of Market Drayton entertains Colonel
Robert Clive; and our hero makes an acquaintance.

One fine autumn evening, in the year 1754, a country
cart jogged eastwards into Market Drayton at
the heels of a thick-set, shaggy-fetlocked and
broken-winded cob. The low tilt, worn and ill
fitting, swayed widely with the motion, scarcely avoiding
the hats of the two men who sat side by side on the
front seat, and who, to a person watching their
approach, would have appeared as dark figures in a
tottering archway, against a background of crimson
sky.